You represent the utilitarian view because you consider the result of the action the sole determinant of rightness or wrongness of the action. Utilitarianism focuses on the results, the consequence, not the motive of the agent.
By contrast deontological ethics focuses on the agent's intent for performing an action. If the agent is acting out of duty to do the good, to be morally correct, then the agent's action is morally correct.
In the case of my friend, he did the right thing (so you say) because doing so produced the morally correct result: the immediate result of marrying his girlfriend rather than arranging an abortion for her, or skipping out on his knocked up girlfriend.
Before he married her many told him he didn't have to go this route, but he said repeatedly things like--how could I show my face in this town if she gets an abortion or if I don't marry her--representing his true motive.
His motive was morally wrong because one should marry because they love that person and they want to spend the rest of their lives with that person, not to satisfy the perceived moral requirements of a community.
You represented the Utilitarian view by claiming his action (to marry his knocked up girlfriend rather than getting her an abortion, or not marrying her) was the correct moral choice because the child was not aborted and was born into a married family. While my pal's choice produced the right result, he acted out of fear or coercion. His intent was to escape retribution and that is why he made the correct moral choice. In the legal profession, this is called a quid pro quo.
One is immoral (in my opinion) if they need a carrot dangling in front of their eyes in order to do the good, to act in a righteous manner. The Christian who worships Christ, for example, so she will not go to hell upon death is worshipping Christ for the wrong reason. The Christian in this instance needs to be coerced or persuaded into doing the morally correct action (and I'm not saying that not worshipping Christ is immoral). So, the Christian's action has produced the right result, but her intent for worshipping Christ was wrong.
Christians should worship Christ because they want to participate in the Messiah's glory, not to avoid punishment.
In summation, Utilitarian=result based ethics; Deontological=intent, motive based ethics (also called duty-based ethics). I probably got my first taste of these two ethical theories when I was 14 years old. My brother and I had terrible parents who did not provide us with proper supervision. Growing up in New Orleans, La. we basically did whatever the heck we wanted to do. My brother surmised that I had shoplifted from time to time, although I had quit doing it once I got a part-time job and made money (I was shoplifiting beer, cigarettes, things like that).
After a couple months he asked me if I was still doing this and I said no, which was the truth. He asked if I'd ever do it again, and I said "no, I don't want to go to jail!" He responded, something to the effect--you should not steal because it is just plain wrong to steal. What items you are stealing are items you did not earn, and therefore it is wrong to simply take things. You need to see this because many steal and never go to jail, and whether one is ever punished for stealing or not does not take away from the fact that stealing takes property that you did not earn.
Of course, there are exceptions to this moral rule, i.e. stealing to live (explained in detail below); I certainly don't want to purport ethical absolutes.
On another note, Dr. T said:
"we agree that philosophy is an inadequate metric for ethical issues."
Without philosophy there would be no such thing as "ethics." Here I mean the term we use to symbolize the discussion, defense and recommendations for concepts for right and wrong behavior. Without this discussion, there would be no such thing as "ethics"-the term, and possibly not even the concepts that have come from thousands of years of human discussion in this area.
When you say philosophy is an inadequate metric, you are completely oblivious to the fact that this entire thread is one big ethical discussion, consequently we are "doing" philosophy right now. If one were to simply read this thread without commenting, then they are reading philosophy.
Since I'm sure you are aware of this, I take your comment (quoted above) to refer more to the stodgy university-style philosophy that is merely a subject area that includes long books and bearded professors drinking coffee all day analyzing and evaluating tautologies. Philosophy is really an aspect of humanity that cannot really be entirely avoided because contact and communication with other humans, and deep, introspective thought is itself philosophy.
Abortion and warfare, two main topics on this thread, fall into the realm of applied ethics, which is merely one branch of philosophical topics. The other two main areas in ethics in which philosophers construct arguments and debate ideas are: meta-ethics, which discusses exactly what ethics is, from where it is derived and what it means, along with normative ethics, which is practicality based. It is under this latter rubric that morality falls.
For a pretty good broad explanation of ethics and particular ethical theories, consult the following web site.
<a href='http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/ethics.htm' target='_blank'>Ethics explained here.</a>
You mentioned absolute standard(s), and these are problematic for a whole host of reasons. I already mentioned one, and that is survivability of oneself supercedes absolute standards that one should never steal. One should prolong their life and take care of themselves, and if stealing is the only way to do this, say one is starving to death, has no money, then in such a situation, it is not immoral to steal in order to provide nourishment for oneself.
To prolong and care for one's own life, however, is not an absolute standard. Consider a case in which one throws oneself onto an enemy hand-grenade in order to save his comrades' lives; and other cases of altruism apply.
So moral absolutes are problematic because always adhereing to the absolute moral standard (whatever those may be) may lead one to commit other morally wrong actions. Adherence to moral absolutes at all times excludes acting morally in all circumstances. Consider the child who wants to do her Christian duty to honor and obey her parents, yet her parents tell her to strut up and down Airline Highway in search of johns, or the child who picks up stashes of smack for her parents. The action of prostitution or drug running breaks a moral standard, but if the child were to refuse, she would be disobeying her parents, thus breaking another moral standard to honor and obey her parents. This is only one example, certainly there are countless other scenarios that show how conflicting absolute moral standards are sometimes mutually exclusive, given some circumstances.
Another puzzling aspect to your statement that philosophy is inadequate in relation to ethics or ethical issues is the fact that philosophers (those with advanced degrees from higher learning in philosophy) the world over do research, write position papers, and set the ethical agenda for countless businesses and organizations, including the federal government of most western nations. These are called, usually, consultants and they discuss with other philosophers working the same field in order to construct the findings of their research.
BP/Amoco, for example, employs philosophers to research, organize information, and to outline a strategy for limiting the company's actions that may venture into questionable ethical terrain. Company boards examine the positions the consultants elucidate and set their company's agenda in accord with the ethicists' findings.
Ethics is about values and from basic history, reading and examining all kinds of primary source data from other eras of time, shows clearly that values change as culture changes. To keep up with the always changing ethical terrain of society, each government in almost all nations on earth consult with philosophers (more specifically, ethicists) so the government may follow and set the policies that are in accord with their society's or world culture's collective ethical standards.
Philosophers are not the only people working in this area, lawyers, doctors, scientists, theologians, etc. have all been involved in examining ethical terrain, and closely watching the changing nature of values. After all a philosopher is not a requirement for one to philosophize, but it just so happens that philosophers have a firm grasp on how to organize information and set forth a persuasive argument based on the information.
Of course, you will likely counter my retort with the idea that world religions are the proper metric for ethical issues, and in this regard, I point to the manner by which religion evolved into theology, which in term became a discipline much like philosophy.
The early Christian church, for example, competed with pop-philosophies until Ambrose, Tertullian and Augustine borrowed Platonic ideas and incorporated these into the Church's orthodoxy; these were called apologetics. The early Church fathers wanted to make Christianity more logically inviting similar to the many competing philosophies of the day. Many of Augustine's apologetics were quite influential and Augustine was well-versed in Aristotelean logic, Platonic essences and the power of persuasive argumentation, all of which serves as the basis of mass Roman conversions from the third to seventh centuries, CE.
Not only does theology owe much to philosophy, but many of the very ethical principles contained in the world religions today originated in philosophical discourse many years prior to the existence of the respective religion. Christ's Golden Rule moral principle preceded Christ by about 500 years in ancient Mediterranean cultures. Socrates delivered the first (eventually recorded) orations on duty-based ethics (which is, in a nutshell the Golden Rule) in the Athenian Agora long before Christ. Plato and his students recorded Socrates' orations in Plato's Academy. Thanks to crusades of the 11th and 12th centuries, the manuscripts were recovered from Byzantine libraries. Once released into the learned European community, the Church of course, condemned these writings despite the fact the ideas represented did not differ much from the Christian orthodoxy.
Many of Moses' commandments were extrapolated through philosophical discussions in countless cultures the world over, long before Moses walked the earth.
Many would argue today, and George Bush would call these "revisionists," that some of the most prolific and revered religious figures such as Christ and Mohammed, Abraham and Moses, Siddharta Gautama and Mohatmas Ghandi engaged their followers in philosophical discussions, and ethical principles were extrapolated from these.
